Jihadist-linked terror attacks across Europe

A London terror attack claimed by the Islamic State group has left seven people dead and 48 wounded after men mowed down and stabbed revelers on Saturday night. It is the latest in a deadly series of strikes linked to radical Islamists against European targets in the last two years.

France has been hit the hardest, with 238 deaths since early 2015. The first attack comes on January 7, 2015 when two brothers who claim allegiance to AlQaeda gun down 12 people in an attack against the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris. The next day, a man linked to the Islamic State group (IS) shoots dead a policewoman in a Paris suburb.

He takes hostages in a Jewish supermarket near Paris the following day, killing four people. All three gunmen are killed by police. In April 2015, a woman is killed by a radical Islamist, in June a delivery firm boss is killed and then decapitated, and in August a man opens fire in the Thalys train between Amsterdam and Paris before he is overwhelmed by passengers. Two people are wounded. On November 13, 2015 France suffers its worst ever terror attack, when suicide bombers strike several targets, killing 130 people and wounding 350.

The sites include the Bataclan concert hall, bars and restaurants, and the Stade de France stadium just north of the capital. The IS group claims responsibility. In June 2016, a policeman and his companion are killed at their home west of Paris by a man who swears allegiance to IS. On July 14, the national holiday, a man rams a truck into a crowd in the Mediterranean resort of Nice, killing 86 people and wounding more than 400. He is shot dead by police. IS claims responsibility. Twelve days later, two jihadists slit a priest’s throat in his church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, Normandy. They too are shot dead. IS claims that attack as well.

On March 22, 2016 suicide attacks claimed by IS kill 32 people and wound more than 340 at Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station, near the European Union headquarters. On August 6, a machete-wielding man attacks two policewomen in Charleroi, southern Belgium, slicing the face of one before being shot dead by a third officer. The IS group claims responsibility. — AFP